The Great Escape, While A Hollywood

Spectacle, Is Broadly Accurate

In the opening minutes of The Great Escape, “the Kommandant” (Hannes Messemer) of the Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war camp warns Captain Ramsey (James Donald) against trying to escape. Ramsey’s cadre of captured Allied airmen are prolific, well-known escapers, but the Kommandant seeks a quiet life far outside the spotlight of Berlin. Not happening, Ramsey tells him, explaining that “It is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape.” As Tom Fordy noted in The Telegraph last week, those words firmly establish the “tally-ho, sticking-it-to-Jerry tone of The Great Escape – the indomitable spirit that bobs along to the sound of its much-whistled theme tune. The film, now celebrating its 60th anniversary, is a tremendous, undisputed classic, the stuff that bank holiday afternoons were made for – all machismo, schoolboy pluck, and belly-firing derring-do best personified by Steve McQueen’s Captain Virgil Hilts." However, as Fordy writes, there was no duty to escape. “There was an expectation, perhaps, that POWs would attempt it – and the God-given right to have a jolly good go – but no actual duty to do so.” In fact, senior POWs were warned repeatedly not to attempt a mass escape – not just because German guards wanted a quiet life, but because the repercussions would be severe.” Essentially, the film is a broadly accurate retelling of how, in March 1944, 76 POWs tunneled their way out of Stalag Luft III. Unfortunately, all but three were recaptured, and 50 – under direct orders from Hitler – were killed by the Gestapo. “What people need to realize is that the story of the Great Escape is far darker than the film makes out,” Fordy says. “At its heart, it’s a story of recklessness and murder.”

Nine Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Like

Cormac McCarthy's The Road

There’s something about characters facing the end of the world that readers love. Maybe it’s the will to survive in the face of devastation, or the way humanity can overcome even the worst...even in themselves. As Jena Brown recently wrote in an article for Murder-Mayhem, “It’s easy to decide how you’d act in those extreme situations from the comfort of your own home. Rather than focus on heroism and action, however, [the late] Cormac McCarthy tapped into something far deeper and more profound when he released The Road in 2006.” Essentially, the novel is about a father and son making their way through a desolate America with only a pistol and a shopping cart. “There’s very little to cheer for, as McCarthy maintains a gritty realism and refuses to paint a shiny façade on mankind. You’re forced to really examine what those circumstances would be like...and how far you might deviate from morality in order to survive. And that’s probably why post-apocalyptic novels take root in our hearts.” In any event, to commemorate McCarthy's immeasurable contributions to the literary world, Brown compiled this list of nine post-apocalyptic thrillers certain to keep you on the edge of your seat while you desperately root for the characters to survive. 

COLD CASE

4-Year-Old Nikky Campbell Vanished

In 1991; Police Are Still Searching

Thirty-two years ago, four-year-old Amanda Nicole Eileen Campbell was playing with friends in her Fairfield, California, neighborhood when she vanished and left her family with a single clue: her bicycle lying on its side a few blocks from her home. Nikki — as she was known to family and friends — was with her brother at a friend’s house just four doors from their own home on Dec. 27, 1991. That afternoon between 4:30 and 5 p.m., Nikki left to go four houses further down the street and visit another friend. She was never seen again. Police searched for the young girl with dogs and believe she was picked up at an intersection near her home before she was taken to a nearby McDonald’s and eventually onto westbound Interstate 80. In 1992, police named an Oakland man, Timothy Bindner, as a suspect in the case and searched his home, but found nothing. Bindner ended up suing the town of Fairfield for defamation and won a $90,000 settlement in the late '90s. He also was a person of interest in the disappearance of several other little girls in that area of California, and reportedly inserted himself into the investigations but was never charged. In 2001, police searched the crawl space of a home after receiving a tip that Nikki may have been killed and buried there, but that search was fruitless as well. As reported by Investigation and Discovery, Nikki would be 36 years old, but police suspect she was the victim of foul play. Anyone who has information about her disappearance should call the Fairfield Police Department 707-428-7355.

How “Shuffle Off The Mortal Coil”

Came To Refer To Death Or Suicide

“Shuffle off this mortal coil” is an idiom that has been in use for hundreds of years. Generally described as a poetic term for the troubles of daily life and the strife and suffering of the world, “mortal coil” is used in the sense of a burden to be carried or abandoned. Thus, to “shuffle off this mortal coil” means to rid oneself of the trials and tribulations of life, and the only way to truly do that is to die. The phrase was coined by William Shakespeare, and is found in the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in his play, Hamlet: “What dreames may come, When we have shufflel’d off this mortall coile, Must give vs pawse.” While it’s clear that Hamlet is referring to dying, he is cataloguing the tedious things about life – the things that make life unbearable, or even irritating. Why suffer all that when one could put an end to it with the simple act of suicide. "Coil" actually is an ancient word, commonly used to indicate a mixture of messy things such as noise, confusion, uncertainty, bustle, and so on. We don’t use it like that anymore, but most of Shakespeare’s audience would have received it in that way. Thus, what we have is Hamlet talking about how one could relieve oneself of all the messiness of life by stabbing oneself with a bodkin (a large needle used for sewing sacks of flour). In this translation, “coil” now makes sense.

REVIEW

S.A. Cosby Nails The Reality Of The

Rural South In All The Sinners Bleed

Without a doubt, one of the grittiest new authors to hit the literary scene in recent years is S.A. Cosby. His crime novel Blacktop Wasteland landed him on the bestseller charts three years ago, and his follow-up novel titled Razorblade Tears won him widespread acclaim, as well as a full spectrum of literary awards. That’s why I was eagerly awaiting his most recent mystery/thriller All The Sinners Bleed [Flatiron Books], and it didn’t disappoint. In fact, it clearly cements Cosby as a master of the crime fiction genre, right up there with such luminaries as Elmore Leonard, Thomas Harris, and Dennis Lehane. Whereas his first three books placed the main protagonists outside the law, Sinners is a police procedural that focuses on Titus Crown, retired FBI agent-turned-sheriff in rural tidewater Virginia. As a black lawman in a largely white county, Crown finds his hands full when a beloved white high school teacher is gunned down by a former student, a black man who is summarily shot and killed by a deputy. What begins as a tale of a school shooting quickly evolves into something increasingly macabre and sinister, as each twist and turn lays bare yet another secret of Southern dysfunction: the tempered anger and confusion of the Confederate mindset, the sense of loss and quiet contradictions tied to place, and the smoldering embers of racism set to ignite a fire at any moment. Cosby is at the top of his game with All The Sinners Bleed and, to echo what Stephen King recently noted in The New York Times, “The reality of the locale and the people who live there lifted this story up and made it sing.” I'll just call it what it is: An absolutely awesome read.

Coming September 12:

INDIGO ROAD

“Indigo Road is a beautifully wrought, hard-biting story with elements of classic noir presented through a prism of modern sensibilities. A fantastic read.” –S.A. Cosby, bestselling author of Razorblade Tears 

While still slinging drinks fulltime at The Sandbar in Folly Beach, Jack Connor works a side gig as a licensed bounty hunter. One afternoon, as he's transporting his latest bail skip named Willis Ronson back to jail, his SUV is ambushed by a team of gunmen, killing Ronson instantly and seriously injuring his court-appointed attorney, Alisha Dupree. Connor can’t help but poke around the edges of the deadly incident and quickly learns that Ronson was a man of many secrets, including a mysterious woman from his past who has caused him to be sucked into a domestic terrorist fringe group.